By Arturo Garcia
Raw Story (3/22/16)
Young Turks host Cenk Uygur slammed the idea that Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is a boon for progressives or that his nomination was a clever move by President Barack Obama.
“I’m supposed to support this guy because somebody with a (D) next to their name said that that was the ‘party line,’” Uygur asked. “‘Hell no’ is not strong enough. If he was proposed by a Republican president I’d want to filibuster him.”
While activists are staging rallies to pressure Republicans to vote on Garland’s nomination, Uygur argued that Garland’s record concerning the Citizens United ruling and habeas corpus rights make him unfit to serve on the high court.
Uygur noted that, as Just Security reported, Garland was the only Democratic appointee who chose not to dissent when the DC Circuit Court of Appeals refused to rehear a case involving US detainees’ right to a hearing “before being transferred to countries in which they might credibly fear torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”
“All the other Democratic appointees said, ‘No, you’re not allowed to transfer these detainees to a place where they’re gonna get tortured;’ Garland disagrees,” Uygur explained.
Garland also joined in a 2003 decision stating that detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison were not entitled to habeas corpus protections. The decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
“If the government has someone, they have to actually try them; they have to bring them before a judge. They can’t just make them disappear,” Uygur argued. “If you allow the government to do that, that is as tyrannical as it gets. Habeas corpus is the core of what people call ‘Western civilization.’ What I call any civilization.”
Garland also joined in the 2010 decision in SpeechNow vs. FEC, which Uygur said put Citizens United “on steroids” by removing the limits on donations to super PACS, so long as they were not coordinated with political campaigns.
“F*ck no. F*ck no, vote no,” Uygur said. “Any real liberal or progressive wouldn’t want this guy walking by the Supreme Court, let alone being in the Supreme Court.”
Watch Uygur’s commentary, as aired on Monday, below.
